All of us know that sometimes Mars landers go astray. Sometimes they are found right away, and sometimes it takes a while to locate them.
The Planetary Society needs your help looking for the lost Martian sheep, particularly the Mars Polar Lander (which was last heard from in 1999 just before it headed into the Martian atmosphere). They have successfully located other spacecraft using the uber-sweet HiRISE camera (or High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment to you and I) and are hoping to do the same with the Polar Lander, among others that may be more difficult to find. They’ve located five other American landers in the past, but the difficulty is that it’s easier to do this with real human eyeballs. So they’re looking for volunteers.
If you would be interested in sifting through photos from Mars looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, learn more and sign up here! Just imagine yourself at a party in the future, saying to the attractive yet geeky person next to you, “Yeah, I found the Mars Polar Lander. They couldn’t have done it without me.”
Thanks to io9 for the headsup. Image courtesy of Tim Thornton
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